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Bob the Plumber Cont.

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 15:18:00 +0000

Water line to fridge is replaced and working.

What'd that take? Two weeks?

Job itself took 15 minutes. Should have done plastic line to begin with. As long as the mice don't chew through it, should last forever.

- b

Bob the Plumber

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:45:00 +0000

First the toilet leaked from underneath. I fixed that with a new wax ring, then it leaked from two places on the tank - tank to bowl bolt and the ballcock valve.

Apparently all the rubber seals dried out when I emptied it of all the water and left it lying on its side for a day. It's amazing all the little parts and seals you can buy individually to repair all this stuff for like a $1 each or entire kits for just $10. I opted for the entire ballcock kit and tank bolt kit. Turned out to be a really good move as the ballcock kit included pieces I was apparently missing.

The install was easy though I had to go through the pain of draining the tank again, which gets water everywhere.

The new stuff screwed right in, sealed itself and I was done.

It's like a new toilet.

Now onto the fridge water line.

- b

Backed Up

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:31:00 +0000

Got the flange fixed on the toilet.

They have these nifty metal rings you install over top your old flange and you're on your way. The toilet doesn't even rock.

But it's not fixed.

I guess while it was sitting on it's side, the weight of itself stretched the seals around the bolts between the tank and the bowl.

Now the tank leaks, but only enough for a towel and bucket to keep it from becoming a complete mess. Not sure when I'll get around to completing this one.

Next I took a little time to at least figure out why the water line to the fridge was leaking. My first suspicion was the coupling between the new line I put in a little while ago and the line from the fridge. I had some problem with it the first time. I figured it finally gave up. Turns out that wasn't the case.

The copper line itself gave up. I realize we have hard water (at least going through this line), but I'd expect the line to last a little more then a year or so. So it's off to Home Depot to find something stronger and replace all this.

- b

Toilet Flange

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:07:00 +0000

Our toilet rocks.

Literally, it rocks, which means it now leaks.

Well, it did till I took it apart.

A little wobble overtime will cause the wax seal to fail and the toilet to leak. That's why it leaks. The next question is why does it wobble or why does ours wobble?

Could it be that the flange is somehow installed incorrectly? Could it be that somehow the closet flange bolts aren't in their normal slots (which are broken, the slots, not the bolts), but have been drilled through the flange which causes irregularities in the flange surface (the bolt slots are recessed for the bolt heads. The manually drilled holes for the bolts are not recessed), thus causing the toilet to rock?
Though you can't see where the flange rises above the height of the floor at the bolts, you can see where the bolts have been manually drilled and pushed through the flange. How this was done, I have no idea. The flange doesn't just pop off the pipe and pop back on.

The correct fix for this is to cut the pipe, remove the flange, and put a whole new assembly back in its place. The problem is I have two layers of vinyl flooring in this bathroom I'd like to replace with tile, which could change the level of the floor. If I replace the flange now, which has to be flush with the floor, it could be off once the tile floor goes in. Better to wait for the heavy work until the floor is right.

For now, I'll return the "extra thick" wax replacement ring I bought (which has longer screws that I can't replace because of how the above screws were installed), get a regular ring, then use caulk around the base of the toilet to stop the wobble. Of course if it ever leaks again I'll never know as the caulk will keep the water under the toilet and rotting through the floor. One day I'll go to sit down and fall right through to the basement as the weight of me and the toilet crashes through the rotted floor.

Joy.

Is it too late to rent?

- b

One Guy and a PBR

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:21:00 +0000

Got the new dresser moved up to Abigail's room.

It's a behemoth, and I couldn't figure out how to get the drawers out of it.

The easiest route was out through the garage, around the back yard, up the deck and in through the sliding glass doors. The dog leg into the room made me a little nervous, but we made it without a scratch.

If ever it needs to come out of that room, I'll be sure to pay someone.

- b

Tree Damage

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:56:00 +0000

Spent most of yesterday afternoon cleaning up some tree damage at Jen's mother's house.

I swear White Pines aren't indigenous to this area considering how poorly they do in wind and heavy snow.

Her township has a chipping program. The plan was to make a pile of what could be chipped and make a pile of what couldn't (8" diameter limitation). The chipping pile is supposed to be at the street, but considering the chipping appointment (chipping is free, but you need an appointment) might not be for another month, I kept it back behind the house.

For now the pile that can't be chipped is under the deck. Some point soon, I'll need to go back and haul that off myself.

Should make for nice bonfire wood.

- b

Township Easement

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:12:00 +0000

Came home Wednesday night to find the township had plowed around the opening of my driveway.

Well that's nice of them. Typically your driveway just gets plowed in.

A closer inspection revealed things weren't so nice. In plowing around the entrance of our driveway they completely plowed over our street number and a shrub that was planted near the road.

Well that sucks.

I took some pictures and headed over to the township office the next morning.

Turns out the township has an easement that runs sixteen and a half feet from the middle of the road out into everyone's property. This gives them the right to plow back huge piles of snow that might otherwise cause safety issues with "line of sight".

My driveway is such a case. There's a dip and a rise just before you get to it. If a car rolling down the road is in that dip, they can't see me coming out of my driveway when there's four feet of snow piled up around it.

In the end, all I could do was thank the township for making my driveway safer and easier to enter and exit.

The landscaping and street number were put there by the previous owner

I tried salvaging the shrub.

I'll deal with the street number later.

- b

Fios Battery

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:11:00 +0000

Did you know the battery in a Fios system would need replacing?

I should have known. It's not like batteries last forever.

Turns out the backup battery is only used to keep the phone working in the event of a power outage. The phone I don't care about. If the stupid thing didn't beep every so often to let me know the battery was dead, I would have just left it.

A little research on the interweb and I found I could get a replacement from Verizon for $100 or one from Radio Shack (that probably won't work) for $35.

I opted for the $35.

It fit. The beeping stopped and all the lights are green again.

We'll see how long it lasts.

- b

Water in the Basement

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:56:00 +0000

The tenant came home one night to find water in her basement.

The first thing you do whenever there's water in your basement is look for the source (duh). In this case it appeared to be coming from the furnace or the condensation pump.

I took the furnace inspection panels off and looked all inside. No water there, so we focused more on the pump. We poured more water into the pump to see if it was working and it was.

Hmmm.

The best guess was with the exhaust pipe.

Notice where the pipe exits the foundation? It appears to be only a couple of inches above the ground. There's a standard distance the pipe should be above the ground for clearance of things like snow. Not meeting that standard, they put in a 90°, ran a vertical piece the standard, then added another 90°.

The nights previous to the water in the basement had been really cold (single digit cold). Our theory was the steam passing through the vertical piece during the cold quickly condensed and froze. When the temps warmed up, all that ice melted and ran back down to the pump overwhelming it.

Ok, so how do you fix that?

It turns out the "ground" beneath where the pipe exits isn't really the ground. It's a raised flower bed that robs the pipe of the clearance it should have. In the spring the plan is to dig out that part of the flower bed so the pipe can horizontally run out of the foundation at the proper height. That should cure the condensation problem of the vertical pipe on really cold nights and remove two 90°s, thus increasing flow.

At least that's the theory.

- b

Playing Landlord

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:14:00 +0000

The new house needed a few things done before the new tenant moved in.

First we had Michelangelo throw some paint on the walls.

Then it was my turn to steam clean the carpets.

But there's a problem. Being new at this whole landlord deal, we missed the water contract. That means no water in the house till next week.

Without water, how do you steam clean?

You haul water over there.

Very carefully with everything else.

Yeah. My life has been exalted to precariously hauling water in cat litter boxes.

At the house I vacuumed while the water was at a low boil. Fired up the steam cleaner and had it all done in a couple of hours.

The carpets still need replacing.

Maybe next year.

- b

More Bike Maintenance

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:08:00 +0000

You'd think I was riding more or something.

The other day, while swapping the clown tire back to the normal one, I noticed my bottom bracket (bearings between the cranks and axle) was bad.

My cranks had a little swagger in them. The left side bearing felt like a loose bag of marbles opposed to the tight/smooth piece of machinery it's supposed to be.

Luckily I had a spare set of semi-used bearings just lying around, which is great considering my aversion to spending money on this thing right now.

I honestly wasn't sure what the condition of the spare bearings were, but was willing to try.

Hell. It's not like the bike wouldn't appreciate the handling anyway.

It's really a quick job. I think I spent more time cleaning off all the crud then actually removing and installing the new set of bearings.

The verdict?

The new ones are good. My cranks peddle straight again.

- b

Bike Maintenance Cont.

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:01:00 +0000

Clown tire isn't going to work in the rear. It rubbed.

The brake was rubbing too. I thought I'd try a different caliper position, but the pads had been worn to fit the rotor a certain way. With the caliper in a different position, the pads were rubbing differently and creating resistance. Climbing sucks more then usual when your rotors are dragging.

So I changed the tire and put the caliper back to its original position.

All in time for a snow ride.

- b

Some Bike Maintenance

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:39:00 +0000

Since my riding average had gone from three times a quarter to three times in a week, I decided it was time for a little maintenance.

My chain had dropped on two different rides. Considering my ride average, that's not a very good statistic for equipment failure.

So first thing to do was check the condition of my chain. Eyeballing it I knew there was some slack, but had no idea it was this bad.

For those that don't know, this is a chain checker and it says the chain is bad - really bad.

Great! So it's bad, time to replace it. Not quite.

It's so bad, technically I should replace the cog and the chain ring. Simply throwing a new chain on the old gears could make things worse or just wear out a new chain faster.

So I checked the cog. Unfortunately there's no cool technical gizmo for checking cogs. It's all eyeball.

And my eyeballs have an astigmatism, but what's supposed to be little half circles between the teeth now look like little half ovals.

At this point it's not even worth looking at the chain ring.

So what's a guy do with some messed up bike parts, a kid due the end of the month and a house closing next week?

Flip the cog around (so the ovals stretch the other way) and tighten the chain via the sliding axle adjustments.

Voila! Single speed bike is fixed. Riding three times in one week isn't worth new stuff. If I start to average that per week, maybe I'll reconsider.

Since I was playing bike mechanic, I decided some different (notice I didn't say new?) tires could make things interesting.

I should just call them clown tires. They're huge. The bike is more rubber then it is steel.

There so big, I had to be careful how true the rear wheel was when fitting in the frame.

Considering my aversion to bike maintenance cost, I had better got the wheel true or I'm buying a new frame.

- b

Headlight Hell

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:17:00 +0000

The passenger side headlight went out in Jen's car.

That's easy enough. The way headlights are today you just pop a clip, pull out the bulb, put the new one in and reset the clip.

It took me nearly two hours to do that in Jen's car. If it had been the drivers side, it would have gone much faster.

In her Prius, to change the passenger side bulb, you need to first remove an engine cowl then an air intake. Once that's done, you have a tiny little space you can't see to work in upside down.

The next step is removing the waterproof cover. The instructions say "turn counter-clockwise (but it's backwards) and pull. If it sticks wiggle it a little". I pulled, wiggled, pulled, wiggled, cursed, threw some tools, etc before the damn thing popped off.

The next step is the clip (locks the bulb in place) - like any headlight clip, just unclip it - but it's backwards and upside down. Fumbling for the clip I managed to dislodge the bulb from under the clip, but not enough to remove the bulb - only enough to prevent the clip from being unclipped.

Did I mention it was freezing outside even in the garage? My fingers felt like wooden pegs. I couldn't feel it when they cut on some sharp edge. I'd pull my greasy fingers out bleeding and not realize it till I saw it.

Finally I asked Jen for some kind of mirror. She had an old compact I was able to use and see what happened.

Using the mirror I could see the bulb, see the clip and see where it all got messed up. Unfortunately I couldn't hold the mirror and work on the bulb at the same time. I had to commit to memory what I saw, reverse it, then translate it to what I felt with my wooden peg fingers.

It took a while. It took a long while and some tool throwing before I got the old bulb back in the right spot so I could finally unclip it. The bulb came out. The new one went in. I snapped the clip back in place, then reassembled the rest.

I really hate this crap. That was two freaking hours of frustration and freezing. For two pleasant hours of my life, I would have easily paid $50 to have my mechanic do that.

- b

Almost Got it All

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:15:00 +0000

We started the holiday break with a lengthy list of things to do. Most of it had to do with the preparation of our new family member, which really meant - make more room.

Since Jen and I moved in four years ago, we've primarily lived on the top floor of our house (we have a bi-level), and either put or left everything else in storage downstairs. With a kid coming, with new furniture and a whole bunch of other crap on their own, we had to some reorganizing.

The main culprit is what we call the blue room. It's a room downstairs with blue carpet. It's served a couple of purposes over the four years and has been documented in this here blog. Lately it's just been a huge catch-all for stuff. It's caught so much stuff, you could hardly open the door.

What's amazed us most is that the majority of the stuff is now simply gone. We threw out a lot. We've made one trip to Goodwill - soon to make another. We Freecycled a bunch of stuff. One women called me the most generous person on Freecycle (meanwhile I'm cursing all the lousy-bastard no-shows). And we also moved things around.

We had storage in our garage attic that was hardly used. When we found something we needed to keep, but not use often, it got boxed and moved out to the attic.

The Picture is meant to be dark. That's how I saw it in all my trips into the garage yesterday. Kind of creepy. Reminded me of Samara's (The Ring) hideaway in the horse barn. No wonder all the horses killed themselves.

Items that needed to be handy, we moved into our newly organized "workroom" or the newly added shelves I put in our furnace room.

By 9pm last night our blue room had become simply another room.

Unfortunately that lasted all of five minutes. There are other rooms whose use take priority in the coming weeks, so the goal was only to get this one completely clear so we could clear out the other higher priority rooms.

Like I said - almost got it all.

At least now we're way closer to having it all clean and clutter free. More like a house we live in and not just a space we store stuff.

At least that's the effect I was going for when I hung some pictures in my gear room.

- b

Picture Says it All

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:02:00 +0000

- b

Miscellaneous Crap

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:26:00 +0000

Haven't been very project oriented over the holiday break.

I got the important thing done - getting the tractor ready to plow - in case of mid snow storm labor pains.

but after that it's all been random crap like taking the bad cleats out of my "old riding shoes", so I can replace them and stop using my "good shoes".

Like I ride enough to warrant "old" and/or "good" shoes. Don't have new cleats yet. Wouldn't really need them till it warms up anyway.

I did some website work (refresh your cache), but nothing as far as necessary improvements, just maintenance.

I also reorganized my detached garage so the truck is NOT parked on the side with access to the attic. We've been moving a lot of the crap that's been unused in the house to the detached garage attic. Having that space more easily accessible (not having to move the truck every time) will make it more viable. In the process I actually emptied three or so boxes that had been packed in the garage since we moved here. Now my workbench is almost usable.

I also started a top-secret project with my commuter bike and the trainer.

Yes I plan to start riding the trainer, but there's an added piece waiting on parts to complete the project. More to follow soon.

We've also been running a lot of baby stuff errands. We spent one morning measuring the walls and current furniture in our nursery, then looking online at various nursery pieces to see what we liked and what might fit. We settled on some things, ran down to the store and placed an order.

Jen has also been procuring and organizing lots of "cute outfits." We might actually be ready for this thing when it comes.

What to do today?

- b

Not Nesting Yet

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:54:00 +0000

Not quite nesting, but we've been working feverishly to get things cleaned up and make more room for the baby.

So far on our holiday break, I finished/completely hacked my toolbox shelf thingy.

Cleaned up the gear room.

Which I've done numerous times, but this time was significantly different. I had and used this box in the gear room,

which I built the summer after my freshmen year in college. I built it as a gear/storage box that fit perfectly behind the cab of my truck and between my roommates and my loft in our dorm room. In my apartment in Spring City it was my gear box and sat in the living room. The same went for our house in Paoli. You can see the scratches on top where CJ used to jump on it to see/bark out the window.

In our house now, where I have an entire room (with closet) for gear, the box was taking up more room then saving it. Soon enough it could be a toy box for kids, but for now it will move out to the garage to hold tools or something.

The next room is our "blue room".

Though it looks in shambles, we've made a lot of progress here. Jen spent the weekend "filing" (either filing or throwing away) all the papers and documents we had stored in here. I've got a huge pile and list on Freecycle to get rid of a bunch of stuff and there's a huge pile for the trash. Hopefully by the end of today we'll have more then just a spare closet, but a spare room as well.

- b

Spare Closet is Ready

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:08:00 +0000

Who knew it would take so long for a closet?

Finally got around to wiping down the walls. I won't go into how nasty that actually was. Let it dry and now it's usable.

It's so nice to check things off the list. No matter how small they may seem.

Next step is to get the room in which the closet is in cleaned up and the room in which the baby will be nurserified.

- b

Doesn't Work

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:15:00 +0000

It appears the battery hack I tried on the dog collars isn't going to work.

In two attempts using off the shelf batteries each lasted only two weeks.

The batteries in the plan usually last three or four months.

Unless both batteries from radio shack were bad, I have no idea why the hack doesn't work.

- b

A Little More

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:34:00 +0000

While "working from home" yesterday afternoon I was able to do a few more things with our new overflow closet.

Exciting huh? A bar by which to hang stuff....

I even vacuumed the space. The only thing left is wiping down the walls and the shelf. Because the cat litter box used to be housed in here, it's a little dusty.

- b

Mixed Bag

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:27:00 +0000

Originally I was supposed to be away this weekend. When plans changed keeping me home, I kind of decided to not do anything and maybe relax a little.

So even though I knew it was supposed to rain/snow Saturday afternoon and I wouldn't have another chance until January, I didn't do the last bit of the leaves in the yard to finish up with them for the year.

But I didn't sit around and do nothing either.

Part of my responsibility in the whole nesting phenomenon is the preparation side. We have a room designated as "the nursery" but it's currently a bedroom with overflow from our closet and drawers. The first task for me is to make available closet space elsewhere, so the closet in "the nursery" can be utilized solely for baby stuff. Seems basic and off-topic from nursery nesting conversations, but I bet fathers everywhere have performed similar tasks prior to the execution of nesting - so follow along.

We have a "spare" room downstairs that we've used mostly for storage - storage of crap we could really just get rid of. In that room is a closet that we've used primarily as our IT closet. In there we had our computer, patch panel, printer, network storage, switches, cables, etc. The idea is to make that closet available as our overflow and rearrange the IT stuff to do so.

Rearranging the IT stuff meant moving most of it out of the closet and into our "work room" where we have these shelves that again we've poorly utilized since moving here. For the most part we just toss things up there and dig around for them later when we need it. That's a huge waste of space. So one of the very first tasks for me in preparing for "the nesting" is organizing these shelves.

Are you still following? We've gone from nursery closet, to spare closet, to work room shelves. See the path?

You can see in the photo I've started a little on the middle shelf on the left. I've been picking low hanging fruit so far and that section was easiest.

The next easiest piece was the toolbox area. In the middle of the shelves I had some toolboxes stacked. Some of which were empty, some of which belonged in other places, and some of which took up too much space. In the picture to the right you see my "roll-away" pieces. The top half has always sat on this little shelf I had made for it. The lower piece was sitting in the middle of the above mentioned shelves taking up too much space. Why I never added it to the collection on the toolbox shelf, I have no idea. Eh. That's not true. The reason it was never added was because the bottom shelf wasn't built to hold it. The legs didn't provide enough space for it to fit down there, so that was the next task.

A little measuring, some cutting, this should be quick and easy!

Not quite. First I didn't accommodate for the lock and label, so after cutting a bunch, making a lot of sawdust, and stuffing it in there, I had to pull it all out, measure and cut again.

Now it slid in past the lock, but I had another issue. I completely forgot that the legs on the other side needed cutting too for the box to completely fit on the shelf.

Doh!

Didn't matter. Jen had another task that needed attention.

Once the tree was up, we headed off to our friends house for the afternoon, so everything was left as it was.

Now back at it on Sunday, for some reason I decided to leave the toolbox as it was for now. I guess I decided the availability of the closet was more important and the empty shelf (from the big set of shelves) the toolbox made was enough to move out the computer equipment from the closet.

So I moved out the equipment and reorganized what had to stay in the closet so we could utilize the closet for it's original intention - hanging clothes.

It's not pretty, and I could have spent a lot more time on constructing a more sophisticated rack for the patch panel, but it's functional and I've got a lot more crap to get to. At least now we have a closet where we can hang clothes (once I put up the bar) that even has an available shelf for whatever else.

I still need to get back to that toolbox and the rest of the shelves in the basement. And now that I look at those pictures of my toolboxes precariously stacked on that rickety little wooden deal, I probably need to do something to strengthen and secure that thing so it doesn't come tumbling down when some little tyke decides it's a jungle gym.

- b

Attic's Done!

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:10:00 +0000

Finished the attic today. Pulled up the last bag of insulation (I think that's six or seven total? Roughly $300) and distributed the batts.

So glad that's done.

Won't have to go up there until Jen wants new ceiling fans or a whole house fan.

While I was finishing that, Jen started the leaves.

I think we've got one more weekend of leaves, though I won't be around for a weekend for quite a while.

- b

Light on the Projects

noreply@blogger.com (JenBob) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:13:00 +0000

Didn't have a whole lot of time or motivation yesterday so I only got the deck furniture hauled up into the attic.

At least it was a semi-fun engineering endeavor.

At some point I need to make a door/cover for the opening in our garage ceiling to tidy things up a bit.

- b